For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[EGross]

Heres a fun fact that many may not be aware of.

There is a saying by Yochanan ben Zakkai who spoke during the messianic fever in Jerusalem (sometime between 30-69CE, which is when he had such authority there), where they were showing up every few months for a time, plus, apparently there were dozens of such insignificance that they are bundled into "them".

A Midrash from has him saying: "If you are planting a tree [In Israel, which is a mitzvah] and you hear [the horns blasting to announce that] the messiah has arrived...just keep planting your tree." (Pirkei d'Rabbi Natan 31b).

Meaning, it's just one more con man among many. If he's the real thing, he will be there when you are done doing something useful and good.

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Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakki went on, by the way, to help his students escape with their lives just before the Temple destruction from Jerusalem and they founded a new center of leadership. And none of them, obviously, believed that the Messiah had ever come. Rabbi Eliezer would later be excommunicated for trying to create one in order to overthrow the Romans, and his student, Rabbi Akiva, will take up where his teacher left off and only after the death of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, will Rabbi Akiva crown Bar Kochba as the messiah, and create a new ferver in Israel.

None of these guys who formed a new government further north ever saw any messiah between 30-70 in Jerusalem. You would think that they would have noticed the horrors and miracles mentioned in Matthew, for example. There is a tradition of the Jews to read dirge-like poetry that extend all the way back to the second temple period. They are called "Kinot", and are read before "T'sha B'av" (a holiday comemorating a series of disasters). There is one where a mother has killed and roasted her own child (Josephus paraphrases it) and ate half of it since the rebels had destroyed all of the food in Jerusalem that was walled up tight.

If they Jews would write about such a horrific visual, you would think that they might have mentioned something about a massacre of all of the firstborn Jewish boys, as written in Matthew. Some cry out in such poetry in the hope of the resurrection of the dead at the end of days, but none of them mention the walking dead that is also mentioned in Matthew.

Rather, more dead was added as the Romans wiped out any trace of the rebels, or anyone who assciated with them, and Vespasian made sure that enyone from the House of David was also destroyed (he had this weird belief that he could be the Messiah for the Jews as well as Roman emperor and didn't want any competition).

It was a weird and hectic time.

Unless one is committed to a vast conspiracy, none of the Jews, nor the Roman leadership noticed any messiah and were weeping because one was not forthcoming (and franky, never did and, from a Jewish perspective, hopefully never will).

But then, that's what makes me an apikoris!

[Confused Ape]

Heres a fun fact that many may not be aware of.

There is a saying by Yochanan ben Zakkai who spoke during the messianic fever in Jerusalem (sometime between 30-69CE, which is when he had such authority there), where they were showing up every few months for a time, plus, apparently there were dozens of such insignificance that they are bundled into "them".

Which would explain why any real Jesus didn't make a big impression on the majority of the population. What I find really interesting is when the messianic fever started because Pontius Pilate was the Prefect of Judea AD 26–36.

If we're going to believe in legends, though, we'll have to accept that Alexander the Great rode a man eating unicorn named Bucephalus.

One of the legends about Bucephalus was that he wasn’t a horse at all — he was a special kind of Turkish-peninsula (where Macedonia is) unicorn called a karkadann.

Like Bucephalus, the karkadann was known to be absolutely untameable, man-eating, and, incredibly fierce. Also, In Greek, Bucephalus meant “ox-head,” which some believed to describe the fact that this animal had horns. In most
classical and medieval manuscripts of the Alexander Romance, Alexander is depicted as riding a horse with either one horn or two. In many, many versions, he’s shown riding a unicorn.

We'll also have to accept Marco Polo's account of why unicorn's became extinct.

According to Polo in Badakshan there lived a breed of horses which were the direct offspring of Bucephalus and local mares. All of them were born with a horn on their forehead, says Polo. This breed was the exclusive property of one single member of the Badakshan royal family. He stubbornly refused to grant the king ownership of some of these remarkable horses and was therefore executed. In revenge his infuriated wife decided to destroy the entire breed. Thus the race of unicorns became extinct.

[EGross]

Ooooh, Unicorns! I thought that Noah just forgot to bring them!

As far as a "historical Jesus", that doesn't seem to be there, although the period was bretty messianic. In the year 30, Shammai dies, but the zeolats that had infiltrated his group were still in countrol. Rabban Gamliel the Elder from the house of Hillel would replace him, but the nastiness of the zealots would overpower any authority he had. The Saducees has tried taking over the temple since 6CE (about) and was successful at around 26CE by bribing the Roman governor and bought the priesthood (which discards any claims Paul had about being a Pharisee and working with the priesthood - they hated each other and would not have worked together. Things are a real mass at this point, and people are looking for a way out of the mess - zealots are killing anyone who appears to be pro-Rome, Pilate keeps trying to sakck the temple, the Jews are pissed, and eventually Rome will call back Pilate to get the creep out of Jerusalem.

As I said, when times get rough, people look for some sort of savior, and any guy with a half-assed claim might be given some acceptance. The best known at the time is Theudus (about 44CE) who was rallying the people to follow him (see Josephus).

The Christian writers mess up that bit of history and in trying to get Gamliel 1st to be nice to the Christians (something he would not have done based on his sayings, and based on who was really running the show - cutthroats and arsonists, literally!) and then having Gamliel 1st mention him. Certainly Gamliel II would not have been in the picture during Paul's supposed period, since he was in hiding until Vespasian was dead (who wanted his head). But the Christian texts are very hard to get history right concerning this period because they need to join a Jesus and a Paul mythology and then try to apply it to make it a nice period piece. So if you can ignore the Christian history, there was a great struggle happening.

[Confused Ape]

As I said, when times get rough, people look for some sort of savior, and any guy with a half-assed claim might be given some acceptance. The best known at the time is Theudus (about 44CE) who was rallying the people to follow him (see Josephus).

But the Christian texts are very hard to get history right concerning this period because they need to join a Jesus and a Paul mythology and then try to apply it to make it a nice period piece. So if you can ignore the Christian history, there was a great struggle happening.

I looked Theudus up and found some mangled history in the Acts of the Apostles.

Acts 5:33-39 gives an account of speech by the 1st century Pharisee Gamaliel, in which he refers to two first century movements. One of these was led by Theudas (v 36) and after him another was led by Judas the Galilean (v 37). Josephus placed Judas at the Census of Quirinius of the year 6 and Theudas under the procurator Fadus[27] in 44-46. Assuming Acts refers to the same Theudas as Josephus, two problems emerge. First, the order of Judas and Theudas is reversed in Acts 5. Second, Theudas's movement comes after the time when Gamaliel is speaking.

So, maybe the Jesus myth was inspired by the Messianic craze and history was just mangled to fit. The Census of Quirinius provided an excuse for the journey to Bethlehem story.

The Census of Quirinius refers to the enrollment of the Roman Provinces of Syria and Iudaea (Judaea) for tax purposes taken in the year 6/7.

In Christianity, the Gospel of Luke connects the birth of Jesus to this census and states that it covered the entire Roman world and required individuals to return to the ancestral birthplaces.

Jesus's birth was then placed during the reign of wicked King Herod the Great because everyone would think him capable of massacring babies. Pilate happened to be Prefect at just the right time for Jesus's execution because who wants a divine Messiah wandering around preaching for decades?

[Minimalist]

Also "Church fathers" would quoted the same works in their apologetic works, however the reality is none of this occurred, which is significant in itself.

Bingo, Just. There was a veritable forgery factory going on as xtian writers sought to find references to their godboy in antiquity. As you say, had there been actual references they would have preserved them and trumpeted them instead of writing sorry bullshit like Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum.

[EGross]

Plus, depending on how you get the census working, it doesn't let the birth happen at 1CE, but a few years earlier or later. Here's a quote about that:

So why was this census even taken according to Matthew? Well, for one thing, Archelaus was so terrible, that even the Romans deposed him after two years of his reign in 6 CE, during the reign of Quirinius. Quirinius then decided to take an accounting of the Jews in his land. However, Luke, in verse 2:2, created a problem by asserting that the reason that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem was because of the census commanded by Governor Quirinius. And if Governor Quirinius asked for that census in the year 6 CE, then how could Joseph and Mary be there for the census and the birth of their son? The result is that this contradiction provides us with a 12-year discrepancy. The discrepancy goes further since Matthew states that Jesus and his family moved to Egypt and spent some time there until Herod was dead and his son was the new ruler. So Jesus would have had to been born even earlier than 6 CE. This means that if Joseph and Mary were in town for the census, then Herod had already been dead for 10 years.

History gets messy in the gospels.

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So there is no history of Herod wiping out baby boys because he wasn't around at the time he was supposed to have killed them!

[Minimalist]

Jesus's birth was then placed during the reign of wicked King Herod the Great because everyone would think him capable of massacring babies.

Except the other, god-inspired, infallible, inerrant, piece of gospel horseshit says nothing about Herod killing babies..... In fact, it pretty much tells a completely different story.

(Not that such ever stops the idiots from declaring both of them "true.")

[Confused Ape]

Plus, depending on how you get the census working, it doesn't let the birth happen at 1CE, but a few years earlier or later. Here's a quote about that:

History gets messy in the gospels.

There's no discrepancy for anyone with a bit of imagination.

Attempts At Harmonisation

Traditional scholars, especially in past scholarship when Biblical inerrancy was more or less taken for granted, have sought to reconcile the two accounts. For the most part this has involved the suggestion of an earlier census carried out, or begun, during the reign of King Herod. It may have been in response to this problem that Tertullian, writing around 200, stated that the census had been taken by Gaius Sentius Saturninus (legate of Syria, 9 – 6 BC) rather than Quirinius.[26]

So there you are. Luke just got confused.

So there is no history of Herod wiping out baby boys because he wasn't around at the time he was supposed to have killed them!

Of course he was around - Tertullian solved the slight problem of the dates not matching.

Even if the dates had actually matched there still wouldn't have been references to the mythic formula story, though, because it's a mythic formula.

What's a special child worth if nobody tries to kill him? Moses escaped death by being floated down the Nile in a basket of bulrushes. Romulus and Remus were also put into a basket which floated down the Tiber. Hera tried to kill Heracles by sending two snakes to his cot but he managed to strangle them. Other heroes were left to die of exposure such as Paris and Oedipus. Herod turned out to be a convenient baddie for a Jesus death escape story because everyone would believe he was capable of it.

The lack of records is easily explained now for those who still want to believe. All it takes is a bit of Tertullian type imagination.

Estimates of the number of infants at the time in Bethlehem, a town with a total population of about 1000, would be about twenty.[6][7]

Of those scholars willing to grant the massacre's historicity, R. T. France argues for plausibility on the grounds, inter alia, that “the murder of a few infants in a small village [is] not on a scale to match the more spectacular assassinations recorded by Josephus”.[15] Schnackenburg follows this line also,[16] and Gordon Franz points to Josephus' failure to mention other pivotal events in the first century AD, such as "the episode of the golden Roman shields in Jerusalem which was the cause of the bad blood between Herod Antipas and Pontus (sic) Pilate".[17] In similar vein Barclay follows Carr in finding Josephus' silence not relevant, drawing a parallel with the diarist John Evelyn's failure to mention the massacre at Glencoe.[18]

Historians didn't think the death of twenty babies was worth mentioning. Problem solved.

When I was looking up these myths I found an interesting variation on the basket story from India about a character called Karna

Karna is one of the central characters in the epic Mahābhārata, from ancient India.

Karna's father was the solar deity Surya and his mother's name was Kunti. Karna was born before his mother's marriage to prince Pandu.[5] The story of Karna's miraculous birth is this:

When Kunti was a young woman, a wise though irascible old man, the sage Durvasa, visited her father's palace, where Kunti served him with utmost care for an entire year. Pleased by her service and hospitality, the sage foresaw that Kunti would have difficulty having a child after her marriage to Pandu, and granted her a boon to overcome this difficulty. By this boon she could call upon any god of her choice, and receive a child through him. Out of curiosity, Kunti still being unmarried, she decided to test the power of the mantra and called upon the god Surya. Compelled by the power of this mantra, Surya appeared before her and handed her a son, who was as radiant and powerful as Surya himself. The baby was wearing armour ('Kavacha') and a pair of earrings ('Kundala'). Though Kunti had not physically given birth to the baby, she was unwilling to be accused of being an unmarried mother and so with the help of her maid Dhatri, she placed the baby Karna in a basket and set him afloat on 'Ashwa' a tributary of the holy river Ganges, the Ashwanadi, in the hope that he would be taken in by another family.

The child Karna was found by Adhiratha, a charioteer of King Dhritarashtra of Hastinapur. Adhiratha and his wife Radha raised the boy as their own son and named him Vasusena. He also came to be known as Radheya, the son of Radha.

Babies floating down the river is such a popular mythic theme that it was used in the movie, Willow

Maybe the only reason why Jesus didn't set sail in a basket is because there was no convenient river near Bethlehem.

[Confused Ape]

Have found a possible reason why the year of Jesus's birth ended up earlier than Quirinius's census in Matthew's gospel.

The Star Prophecy

is a Messianic reading applied by radical Jews and early Christians to Numbers 24:17:
"I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth."

The star has been externalized as an actual star in the sky, the Star of Bethlehem, in the narration of the Gospel of Matthew.

I found this article about the Star of Bethlehem on the Royal Museums Greenwich site. I think one of the suggestions is particularly interesting.

In the year 5 BC when many scholars believe Jesus was born, a combination of a bright nova and a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces was seen. Ancient Chinese astronomers recorded this as an unusually bright star that appeared in the eastern sky for 70 days. This was a rare sight

If you're going to invent a biography where prophecies are fulfilled, getting your divine Messiah born when an unusually bright star was seen would be a good way to go. Herod the Great died in 4 BC so he was the ideal candidate for the 'baddie who tries to kill the special child' myth. You can then add the escape to Egypt - a useful alternative if you don't have a river to sail the baby on.

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and escaped into Egypt, ¹⁵and was there until the death of Herod, in order that the thing spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled, which says: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

Well, that's what the writers of Matthew might have thought but nobody told the writers of Luke who decided to use Quirinius's census as an explanation for why Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They also borrowed Mithras's shepherds so had angels announcing the birth.

The writers of Mark's and John's gospel didn't bother with the childhood stuff because they wanted to start with John the Baptist. Maybe it's just as well otherwise Tertullian might have had even bigger problems trying to reconcile everything.

[EGross]

Yeah, that whole baby thing had to be an add-on that didn't understand that for someone to be the messiah, he has to first fulfill a heck of a lot of things, like freeing the Jews from captivity for a start!

You don't get born to the job. You gotta earn it.

But then, it was 3 non-Jews (later scholers try to make them Jewish Kings from Yemen, which is a problem) who believed in a bunch of superstition that wanted to worship a baby, left a tip and took off in a hurry.

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And yeah, there are way too many discrepancies between Luke and Matthew anyhow. You would have thought that they would have done a better editing job (which is their proof that it is true!)